The visual editor makes it possible to edit Wikipedia pages without knowledge of Wikitext. When reviewing an edit before saving, it is possible to see a diff, which highlights the differences between the old and new pages; however, until recently it was only possible to see diffs in Wikitext. This is problematic for users who are not familiar with Wikitext, and it can be difficult to interpret certain kinds of diffs, such as the switching of two columns in a table. Hard-to-interpret diffs can knock the confidence of a new editor, and for reviewers such diffs can make errors and vandalism harder to detect.

We therefore developed a tool for displaying diffs visually, by showing the richly-formatted page with removed, inserted, changed and moved content highlighted. We briefly discuss the technical challenges associated with calculating diffs between HTML trees, rather than between lines of Wikitext; we demonstrate some use cases of the visual diff tool; and we outline further improvements that we hope to make.

What will attendees take away from this session?

Attendees will gain insight into the visual editor's visual diff tool, why and how it was built, and what they can expect in the future.

This would be a particularly good talk to record and to stream, if that's possible.

Is this Submission a Draft or Final?

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Interested attendees

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